Plagiarism in Indian cinema

The movie makers of Indian cinema seem to have an unexplained fascination towards Hollywood. In the name of adaptation and inspiration we have an endless list of movies made conveniently without using much effort and brain a very obvious but a truly embarrassing resemblance for a movie maker (well most of the movie makers seem to have become immune to the embarrassing part of it) should put oneself in questioning one skill as a movie maker or a dead brainer.

Of course minute modifications and fixes here and there make the Hollywood product ready to be delivered for Indian cinema and we have a new fine work of plagiarism running at the Indian Box office. Every cinema has a fair share of plagiarism involved like the Hollywood adaptations from the European cinema and very recently adaptations from the far eastern cinema however when it comes to Bollywood they seem to have taken this art to a completely new level.

There are traces of Plagiarism to pre historic Bollywood from the screenplay to artwork from sound to music when imagination is thrown aside and idea are ripped off in the name of adaptation is when a movie industry seems to have a problem. Even though some legendary Directors like Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Gulzaar who moulded and gave a strong platform to Indian Cinema on a global level Bollywood have been a constant target of plagiarism.

Some recent Directors have lifted Bollywood time and again like Ram Gopal Verma, Rajkumar Hirani, Prakash Jha, Raj Kumar Santoshi, Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj, Madhur Bhandarkar, Ashutosh Gowariker, Farhan Akhter and Shimit Amin they deserve a mention in the list of people who have helped the cause of restoring some dignity to the creativity of Indian film makers.

The proclivity to copy Hollywood, European and other world Cinema led to the circulation of the term Bollywood, which is denigrating to the Hindi Film Industry's resistance to Hollywood conventions. The Early cinema language in Hindi films (also the popular Indian Cinema, even now) was a direct resistance to the realistic elements in European actualities. Phalke's flat mise-en scene, complete with spectacle drew mostly from the Theatrical conventions. Song and dance sequences are part of the film story and stitched to it. It is nothing like the song/dance sequences in Musicals of the west.

It is the copycat culture which often reduces Hindi Films to a mere farce and kitch production. And some of these Copies are awful. Ek Choti si Love Story butchered Kieslowski's A Short story about Love. However, Mani Ratnam only borrowed the film technique/ story technique in Yuva from Iñárritu's Amores perros.